Years ago for Sunday, Dec 04, 2011

Dec. 1, 2011 at 6:01 a.m.

1911

Dec. 7 - "The Chorus Lady," one of the most successful plays produced in recent years, from an artistic standpoint as well as financial, is booked to appear at Hauschild's Opera House for one performance Thursday evening.

Dec. 9 - The ladies of the Methodist Church will serve a chicken dinner and supper in the Welder building next Saturday, Dec. 16, at 25 cents a meal. At the same time and place, the members of the Epworth League will conduct a sale of useful and ornamental articles suitable for Christmas gifts. The patronage of the public is respectfully solicited.

1936

Dec. 6 - Deputy Sheriff R.A. Rogan and J.B. Piper, special agent of the Southern Pacific Lines, narrowly escaped serious injury or death Friday night when Mr. Rogan's car, driven by Mr. Piper, overturned after being sideswiped south of Falfurrias.

Dec. 8 - A group of Victoria Junior College students have returned from Fort Worth, where they attended the Texas Student Government Congress in second annual session. In the party were Misses Dorothy Thames, Grace Fossati, Henrietta Ennen, Ed Mattox and Carl Fiend. The group was accompanied by Dean F. Hardt.

Dec. 10 - David Walberg and Claude Mullins, in charge of today's Lions Club program, presented the cast of the recent play sponsored by the club. The cast of the play, "The Mummy and the Mumps," consisted of Miss Adrian Thomas, Beatrice Rangnow, Eleanor Ann Van Zandt, Fredaline Schneider, Jane Jordan, Marvin Salziger, Hal Howard Tom, Frank Crain, Walter Higgins and Charles Flynn. The director of the play was O.C. Stroman, a member of the club.

1961

Dec. 5 - Eight men from Selective Service Board No. 125 will be inducted into the Army Dec. 13, Louis R. Kolle, board chairman, announced Monday. The men are William C. Wilson, Eligio Fernandez Jr. and Robert Earl Plummer, of Victoria; Cullen Gable Youngblood, of Seadrift; Romulo P. Ramirez Jr., of Refugio; Robert Joseph Paul, of Port Lavaca; Roque N. Estrada, of Placedo; and Therman A. McKinney, of Refugio. All except McKinney, who is 19, are 22 years of age, Kolle said. Fifty-five men will take pre-induction examinations on Dec. 19 in San Antonio.

Dec. 6 - November was as cold and damp as December has been warm and dry in Victoria, it was confirmed Tuesday in the monthly report issued by the Weather Bureau. November temperatures averaged 60.3 degrees, 3.5 below the normal average of 63.8. The highest reading for the month was 85 on Nov. 1. The low was 41 on Nov. 17.

Dec. 7 - Too young to vote but old enough to speak up, 300 Victoria High School students have signed petitions urging their elders to cast affirmative ballots in the Dec. 19 county election on a proposed $1,250,000 bond issue for a Civic Center. Byron E. Cox, Joe Cone and Bill Stevens obtained the names of their schoolmates on a petition favoring the project.

1986

Dec. 4 - The first shipment of uranium oxide fuel rods to power Unit 1 of the South Texas Nuclear Project will arrive at the site in January. James T. Westermeier, STNP project manager, said Wednesday that a semi tractor hauling a load of four canisters containing two fuel rods each should arrive on Jan. 28. He added that shipments of the canisters of uranium oxide fuel rods would continue for three months. Loading of the fuel rods into the Unit 1 nuclear reactor core is set to begin June 1. A tour of the nuclear power plant facility was held Wednesday for news media representatives from the region, arranged by Central Power and Light Co. - one of the four investors in the project. The Unit 1 reactor and electrical generator project is estimated to be 96.5 percent complete as of Dec. 1, Westermeier said. It is scheduled to begin commercial operation in December 1987.

Dec. 7 - Turning nuclear energy into electricity sounds easy, when it is Warren H. Kinsey who's doing the talking. Kinsey is plant manager at the South Texas Project near Bay City.

"All we do is process water to transfer the heat around," says Kinsey. But it is more complicated than that, admits Kinsey. He said most of the operator's time is used to handle, process and test water.

But what about the uranium 235 and the nuclear reaction? In January, the first of the fuel rods will be received at STP. The fuel rods are made up of bundles of fuel pellets, which have been enriched to 1.5-3.5 percent uranium. When the uranium-laden fuel rods are loaded into the reactor, they will be placed between a set of "control rods," which prevent a nuclear reaction.

The control rods are made with a boron and aluminum alloy. Water inside the reactor vessel also contains a high boron solution. Kinsey said that in order to start a nuclear reaction inside the reactor vessel, the control rods are slowly raised from between fuel rods and the boron and water solution is diluted. "This allows enough neutrons to cross between the fuel elements and have a fission reaction," he said. Nuclear fission is the splitting of an atom. A nuclear particle hits the uranium 235 - splitting it - and these particles continue the chain reaction. It is the force of the atoms splitting apart which produces heat.